Problems in Child Care Found To Persist

Two new reports—one charting a generation-long lack of
progress in solving the nation's day-care problems, and another
focusing on the quality of care used by women affected by new
welfare-to-work programs—argue that the nation has yet to meet
the challenge of providing high-quality child care to a broad spectrum
of its children.

It has been almost 30 years since the National Council of Jewish
Women released "Windows on Day Care," alerting the country to a looming
child-care crunch that would force working parents to struggle to find
care that was affordable, much less high-quality. Since then, the group
contends in a follow-up report being released this week, not much has
changed.

"Remember the Children" is
available for $25 from the Graduate School of Education-PACE,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; (510)
642-7223.

Meanwhile, a second study paints a bleak picture
of the quality of child care for a certain group of
children—those whose mothers are participating in welfare-to-work
programs. "Remember the Children" focuses on 948 single mothers on
welfare from cities in California, Connecticut, and Florida.

Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Yale University, the report says that overall, the children of
those mothers are spending an average of about 40 hours a week in
"mediocre to poor-quality child-care settings.'' Many of their
child-care providers have no more than a high school education, it
says, and television is often used to keep children occupied.

The Berkeley-Yale study is significant, its authors say, because
instead of just relying on mothers' opinions of the child care they
were using, the researchers visited many of the providers.

Quality Lagging

They found that the child- care centers and the family-child-care
homes that children were attending often rated lower on measures of
quality than those serving the broader population.

"If government is going to force mothers into jobs and kids into new
and strange child-care settings, it is in the public interest to
improve those child-care settings," said Bruce Fuller, the director of
Policy Analysis for California Education, a think tank at UC-Berkeley.
Mr. Fuller is co-directing the study with Sharon L. Kagan, a senior
research scientist at Yale.

Many of the children also have dismal home lives, the report says.
About a quarter of the mothers suffer from depression, the study found,
and many reported they often don't have enough food to feed their
families.

The Berkeley-Yale authors suggest that these early results are a far
cry from what President Clinton and leaders in Congress said would
happen when they overhauled the federal welfare system with the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in
1996. A quote from then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of Georgia,
included in the report, promised "a much better future" for children
when their mothers started working.

Improving child care, however, has been a goal of Mr. Clinton's.
Since 1998, he has introduced broad child-care and early-
childhood-education initiatives. While Congress has increased funding
for Head Start, it has offered little response to his other ideas.

This year, Mr. Clinton is pushing for federal subsidies to serve
another 400,000 children, a $1 billion increase in funding for Head
Start—the largest increase in the preschool program's
history— and an expansion of the child-care tax credit, which
allows families to deduct what they spend on child care from their
federal income taxes. The president also wants to make the credit
refundable for low- income families.

"For those making under $30,000 a year, that could mean up to $2,400
for child-care costs," Mr. Clinton said. "We all say we're pro-work and
pro-family. Passing this proposal would prove it."

A refundable child-care tax credit would reduce the cost of care
without requiring parents to use a certain type of care. But it
wouldn't increase the supply of care, said Mr. Fuller, whose project
looks at how the supply of licensed child-care programs, and the
states' welfare policies influence the choices mothers make.

But others say that the 1996 welfare-reform law has, for the most
part, been successful and should not be blamed for a lack of
high-quality child care.

"It would be good if every kid were in a good, high- quality child
care center, but that's not the real world," said Ron Haskins, the
staff director for the Human Resources Subcommittee of the House Ways
and Means Committee.

Mr. Haskins argued that the study provides no proof that the child
care being used is actually harming children. He added that while he
thinks high-quality care can improve outcomes for some children, he
questions its long-term effects on child development.

"They have not made their case," Mr. Haskins said of the study's
authors.

Risks Called Real

But Mr. Fuller argues that the current poor quality of care used by
many welfare recipients jeopardizes not only children, but also the
long-term success of welfare reform.

"Nothing in this report is a slam on welfare reform," he said. "We
just want to look at how healthy the environment is for kids."

Meanwhile, the separate report by the National Council of Jewish
Women acknowledges that low-income families might have more trouble
than most finding good care, but stresses that they are not the only
ones affected.

"The issue of affordability, which many have portrayed simply as a
problem for working-class families, is having a noticeable impact on
the finances of middle-class families, too," the report says. "Women
and men at every level of the workforce and in all economic strata are
feeling the pinch."

While the new report does not attempt to replicate the work that
council members did in preparing the original findings three decades
ago, it does provide a snapshot of how the demand for child care has
increased.

For example, in 1972, 30 percent of mothers with children under age
6 were working, a figure that is now 60 percent. Only 6 percent of
young children were in child-care centers in 1972, compared with 30
percent today.

"Because women are joining the workforce in unprecedented numbers,
the demand for child care is now outstripping the supply of available
slots," the report says.

The council, which is based in New York City, also wanted to do more
than restate information already presented by experts in the field,
group officials said. Instead, they hope the report will spur action
among the service organization's 90,000 members, as well as others
beyond the child-care-advocacy community.

The National Council of Jewish Women's new report notes that many
recommendations from its first report—such as more funding and
better training for providers—still apply today.

"Although there have been significant increases in certain
resources, the child-care system is still failing parents and their
children," the report concludes.

Opportunity Seen

Faith Wohl, the executive director of the New York City- based Child
Care Action Campaign, said that because the report is from a group
outside the circle of child-care-advocacy organizations, it might be
better received.

Some advocates say policymakers are gradually starting to see child
care as an educational opportunity, but that more progress is
needed.

"What I want the message to be is about the education of
children—not just a workforce issue for parents," said Joan
Lombardi, who worked as a consultant on the NCJW report and is a former
director of the federal government's child- care bureau. "We should be
seeing it as a place to promote literacy."

Vol. 19, Issue 22, Pages 1, 15

Published in Print: February 9, 2000, as Problems in Child Care Found To Persist

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